Riding a bike can do much more than get you in shape and transport you from place to place. Inventors are constantly coming up with clever ideas to harness the power created by bikes.

Provide Clean Drinking Water

Provide Clean Drinking Water

Approximately one in eight people worldwide lack access to safe water, and more than 3.5 millon die annually from water-related disease. Japanese company Nippon Basic is looking to change that with its Cycloclean, a bicycle that purifies water for drinking. Riders bike to a lake or river; once there, they insert an attached hose into the water, place the bike's rear wheel into a stationary stand, and start pedaling. The energy generated activates a pressure pump that propels water through the bike's multi-unit filtration system, producing about 1.3 gallons of clean H20 per minute (depending on how fast you're pedaling). According to the company's website, it takes 10 hours (and likely several cyclists) to produce enough drinking water for 1500 people.

The bike also features puncture-free tires to prevent flats and navigate hard-to-reach areas.

Revive a Village

Revive a Village

Much of Carlos Marroquin's home village of San Andrés Itzapa, Guatemala, was devastated by a 36-year civil war. But today, thanks to some clevel engineering, a lot of the village runs on bicimaquinas: pedal-powered machines such as water pumps, grinders, and threshers constructed from donated bikes and local materials. Marroquin found Maya Pedal, the organization behind these machines. He has invented his own, including the biciliquadora (bicycle-powered blender). It helps local women produce organic shampoo from plants they grow in their homes.

Construction is easy: Volunteers fit the rear wheel of an everyday bike with a homemade dynamo—created from a hub, an axle, and a part of truck tire—which is then attached to a modified rack that secures the base of the blender. Once the bike is put into a stationary stand and its rider starts pedaling, the dynamo drives the blender's blade, stirring and mixing at the same rate as the pedals' revolutions per minute.